


Unconventional Tactics

by vellaphoria



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Humor, Late night convenience store runs, getting ninja sugar high for fun and profit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 19:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19774435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: Red Robin supposes are probably better ways to get rid of the group of ninja who are tailing him.But he doubts there are ways that would be morefun.





	Unconventional Tactics

**Author's Note:**

> From a tumblr prompt: "for the celebratory prompts: ninja"
> 
> This was so fun to write!
> 
> Also, a huge thank you to the sprints over on the Capes and Coffee discord for giving me the motivation to start and finish this in a single afternoon/night XD

After the third straight week of ninja tailing him, Red Robin's had enough.

He doesn't know why Ra's has them following him this time; he hadn't even run into the League in over a month before he saw the first ninja. Not that that means anything; Ra's tends to do whatever Ra's wants, even if it makes no sense to anyone else.

Though as opening gambits go, three weeks of _just_ tailing _is_ pushing it a little. Even for Ra's.

But two can play at that game...

"Oh _my_ , it's _already_ midnight?" Red says, letting his voice carry across the rooftop. "I suppose I _should_ take a break."

In the dark, their movement is _just_ visible enough for Red to spot them. They're on the same rooftop this time, tucked away in the deep shadow cast by the building's roof-access enclosure. He counts three, maybe four of them. But they might just be the ones daring enough to get this close. If there's one thing he's learned during his time with the league, where there's one ninja, there's usually _several_.

One of the ninja leans over to the other, frantically whispering something. Possibly trying to figure out what he's doing. As a rule, Red doesn't _take_ breaks on patrol. Hasn't really since he was Robin. So say this is breaking character for him would be an understatement.

Without waiting for them to make up their minds, he sinks the hook of his grapple into a nearby building and drops down to street level.

Behind him, the sound of footsteps _just_ too fast to be silent.

The thing is, Red planned this.

Right on the corner of 15th and Birch is a convenience store. In of itself, that's not entirely unusual. Gotham has several of them, after all. And in most respects, this one is like any other. A tired, bored looking night clerk. Shelves full to bursting with all manner of salty, sugary, entirely inadvisable treats. This is all expected. What's slightly _unexpected_ is the way that, due to the specific arrangement of decorations, paraphernalia, and entirely unnecessary string lights in the windows of this particular convenience store, it's nearly impossible to keep track of a target just by waiting outside.

And that's why it's perfect.

He waits just long enough that the ninja are just poking their heads over the top of the building before stepping inside. The door opens with the sound of small bells jingling against one another. At the counter, the cashier sits, leaning her head on one hand and fiddling with her phone on the other. Her eyes flick up and back down in an especially uninterested manner before, all at once, she goes to high alert and gawks at Red. He mock-salutes her with his grapple gun before sticking it back in his holster on his belt.

Red walks up to the counter.

"If you see a bunch of ninja, please don't call the police. They're pretty well-behaved, but if they aren't just let me know and I'll pay for the damages."

He waits for her to give a small, surprised nod before walking deeper into the store, meandering towards the back.

Behind him, he senses the particular stillness that comes with someone trying to take a picture without being caught. Where the cashier can't see him, he smirks. But he lets her have her fun.

After a quick survey of the aisles, Red stakes himself in the one with Oreos and makes a show of indecisiveness.

He gives the ninja about five minutes before their orders to follow him make them anxious enough to enter a public building. Oh, they'll do that sort of thing when the boss is around to supervise. But give the ninja a mess of colorful packaging, aggressive capitalism, and no instructions? Well, Red's theory is that they won't know what to do with themselves.

And it's a theory he's eager to test.

Conveniently, the store has those small security mirrors hung up in its corners. Through them, Red has an unobstructed, if the indirect view of the door as it opens. The cashier is typing furiously on her phone, but she freezes like a deer in headlights when the first ninja steps through the doorframe. First one foot, and then the other. Like a small child wading into the ocean for the first time. Red has to stifle a chuckle, so as to not give himself away.

When the first ninja is through, another pokes her head in behind him. At this point the clerk is stammering, glancing over at her cellphone like she's warring between calling the cops and following Red's request.

The second ninja fully steps through the door, followed by a third.

The cashier doesn't call the cops.

"Hey!" Red calls out, across the aisles. "If you're going to come in, you're going to help."

The ninjas look around for the source of his voice. When they can't seem to see either Red or his reflection in the mirror, they begin to fan out, picking their way through the store's aisles with a tentativeness Red didn't normally associate with them.

The first ninja to reach him just stares at him questioningly, anchored to the end of the aisle.

"You can come closer," Red says. "I don't bite."

The ninja doesn't look too sure, but she comes closer regardless.

"Have you ever had Oreos?" Red asks her.

The ninja stares at him blankly. Red pulls a package of the aforementioned cookie off of the shelf and hands it to the ninja. She stares down at the blue plastic foil and tilts her head like a confused bird.

"Hold that for me," Red says. "But don't open it yet."

He moves down to the end of the aisle, grabbing a couple of packets of M&M's and a bag of gummy worms. Carefully, he places them on top of the Oreos that the ninja is still holding. As best as Red can tell, behind the ninja's full face mask, she gives him a look best translated as put-upon consternation. She keeps holding them though.

The next ninja Red finds is staked out by the glass cooler doors in the back of the store. He's leaning forward, inspecting the drinks with a critical eye. As far as Red knows, the ninja can read English. But that doesn't mean that advertising and marketing language really _mean_ anything to them. And even if it did, he knows for a fact that Ra's doesn't let the ninja eat or drink anything _that_ processed. Is it healthier? Sure. But is it _fun?_

Red opens the door to the ninja's right, reaches in, and grabs a two-liter bottle of soda. He holds it out to him until, looking unsure, he grabs it from Red. Another bottle follows it. Red makes sure to get a good range, then calls a third ninja over to help the second one.

Five ninja total had entered the store. Red finds the last two loitering by the chips, poking at their packaging.

"Grab what looks interesting," he says. The ninja nearly startle, but eventually they follow through on his suggestion.

Having rounded up five ninja overloaded with snacks, Red makes his way to the counter. The cashier still looks startled, but Red would bet good money that she got _more_ than a few good pictures out of the entire ordeal. Hell, maybe she'd even make some extra money by selling them to one of Gotham's insatiable superhero tabloids.

... he'll have to keep an eye on that actually. When Bruce finds out he was hanging out with the ninja, Red's going to probably have to take an extended vacation across the country.

He motions for the first of the ninja to put her supplies on the counter.

"I'll cover it," he says to the cashier, passing over a hundred dollar bill and going for his best 'money is no object' smile. "Keep the change."

She stares wide-eyed at it for a second before nodding and ringing up the snacks.

Five minutes later, Red and several ninja leave the store, carrying several bags between them.

"We're not climbing any buildings like this, but there's a compromised safe house on 8th and Lane," Red says, turning back to address the ninja.

At the word 'compromised,' they collectively give him a look that says they didn't know that he knew that they knew he had a safe house there. But such was the unending war with Ra's; seeing who can think more chess moves ahead of the other.

The trek to the safehouse is quick and uneventful, and Red manages to get all the ninja inside without too much of a hassle.

With the door closed behind them, Red hits the lights and has the ninja put their bags on the coffee table. He very specifically _doesn't_ acknowledge any of the bugs and security cameras that he knows are there. When Ra's compromises a safehouse, he really puts his full effort into it. Audio bugs, video equipment, the works.

And every time Red's come back here, he ignores it all with an air of ignorance so put-upon that would _tell_ Ra's he's been discovered if the jerk weren't already too damn full of himself to consider that Red had figured it out.

"Eat whatever," Red says, going into the kitchen to scrounge for whatever cups he can find. He's surprisingly successful, considering this isn't a safe house he uses often anymore (thanks, Ra's.)

He comes back with a stack of cups, glasses, and a single mug perched between his hands. The ninja, it seems, have thrown caution to the wind. Ninja three has pulled up her face mask to shove Doritos into her mouth. Ninja one seems to be attempting to de-construct an oreo and coil up a gummy worm inside of it.

It's like watching a bunch of little kids left unsupervised at the grocery store.

Red puts the cups right in the middle of the table and reaches for the closest soda bottle. He's not picky. The ninja soon follow his lead, though he keeps a close eye on them to make sure that there are no sudden eruptions of fizz from opening the bottles too quickly.

Crisis averted, he goes for an as-yet-unopened bag of Cheetos and digs in.

Having grown up in a country with nothing _but_ processed foods (and having picked up several mid-patrol bad dietary choices from someone - _Dick_ ), Red has a tolerance for this sort of thing.

The ninja do not.

It's about an hour in when the early warning signs of a sugar high begin to show themselves. First, the ninja get twitchy. Through the holes in their face masks, Red sees their eyes dart around with excessive quickness.

Then, they break out their phasing equipment.

The thing is, Ra's has always been a sucker for a good dramatic effect. And nothing's quite so dramatic as disappearing and reappearing somewhere else in the blink of an eye. Sometime before Red had first picked up the cape, Ra's began outfitting all his ninjas with miniature, spacial-movement devices that would let them make small, localized jumps across a limited range.

And it entirely loses its effect if they aren't in the shadows when they use them.

An hour and fifteen minutes after the ninja began gorging themselves on sugar, ninja three accidentally trips her phasing device and _poofs_ out of sight, only to reappear a second later right behind ninja number two to tap her on the shoulder. Ninja two, still staring at where ninja three had disappeared, jumps straight into the air in surprise. At which ninja three promptly falls to the floor laughing.

And then they all start doing it.

Chaos breaks out in Red's compromised safe house. Ninja begin appearing and disappearing with wild abandon in some convoluted, impossible to follow game of teleportation tag.

Red calmly reaches for his mug, sipping from it as the ninja lose their minds around him. At some point, he reaches for his patrol cellphone and begins to video record the ongoing shenanigans.

It's probably a good thing he herded them inside his apartment. Gotham probably wouldn't know _what_ to think of several sugar high ninjas hell-bent on abusing their mission technology.

Red would say he has a good thirty minutes of video evidence stored up before one of the ninja - he's honestly lost track at this point - pauses mid-lunge and, without warning, plummets to the floor.

She lands with a _thunk_ , and Red quickly grabs one of the couch's throw pillows and crosses the room to stuff it under her head.

Two more ninja follow. Sensing their imminent demise, the ones who are left stagger to whatever furniture is closest before their sugar-crashes can claim them, too. Which is a good thing, because Red is quickly running out of throw pillows.

In the end, Red is left with an apartment full of demolished junk food, mostly empty soda bottles, and five ninja passed out in increasingly inventive poses.

Red backs up to get a good angle before snapping a final picture. There's something vaguely artistic in the composition, but that may be Red's own slightly sugar-high brain talking.

In the kitchen, he pulls a page from an errant notepad and scrawls some quick advice for them to drink water when they wake up. He then turns to a very out of the way corner of the room, looks up, and stares straight into the security camera that would have had the clearest view of the carnage.

"Your move, Ra's." He says the words clearly and quietly, but not so quietly that the microphones on the camera won't pick it up. Red even lets himself smirk a little for the full effect.

Somewhere to Red's left, a brief burst of static emits from the listening device tucked into the circuitry of the end table lamp.

There are no words. Only the slow, sarcastic clapping of a deeply annoyed yet begrudgingly amused megalomanicial ecoterrorist.

This time, Red throws his head back and really, _really_ laughs.

And with that, he walks out of the safe house, feeling satisfied with a plan well executed and a night well spent.

**Author's Note:**

> (The next time, he gets the ninja drunk)
> 
> If you want to scream about Tim, ninja shenanigans, or just DC in general, I'm also on [tumblr!](https://vellaphoria.tumblr.com/)


End file.
